(76a) Runniness and Randomness of Confined Fluids

Fluids trapped in small spaces feature prominently in science and technology, and understanding their properties is critical to progress in fields that range from cell biology to the engineering of nanoscale devices. Interestingly, such ?confined fluids? behave differently than bulk samples. Properties strongly affected by confinement include (i) how the particles pack together, (ii) how their thermodynamic state changes under heating or squeezing, and (iii) their tendency to rapidly mix or flow. The first two have been reasonably well understood for some time, but a general rule for even qualitatively predicting the third has proven elusive. In this talk, we highlight how recent theory and molecular simulation have discovered links between the entropy (?randomness?) and the dynamics (?runniness?) of confined fluids. These links provide new physical insights and allow one to forecast how nanoscale confinement will modify the behavior of bulk materials.